


Missing during road trip

by Rainy_sunshine



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Love, Dean Has Self-Worth Issues, Drug Use, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Sam Winchester, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Missing Persons, Multi, One-Sided Attraction, Protective Bobby Singer, Protective Dean Winchester, Road Trips, Stanford Era, Supernatural drugs usage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2018-11-05 04:32:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 11,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11006061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainy_sunshine/pseuds/Rainy_sunshine
Summary: 18-year-old Sam Winchester went missing somewhere between Las Vegas and Los Angeles on his way to Stanford, and it's Dean's job to  find and save his little brother





	1. Chapter 1

Sam doesn't pick up his phone, but that's okay. Well, of course Dean worries but he gets the message. His little brother is still pissed, that's it. Probably also has lost his voice what with all the yelling he and Dad did during their epic fight just before Sam stormed out of the room toward his very own bright future as a Stanford student. Also, the kid must be busy making new nerdy friends, buying all kinds of nerdy stuff and... so Dean totally gets it. He is that awesome understanding big brother. He leaves Sammy a message - three of them, to be precise - and then gives his dorky little brother his time to cool down.

\- Sammy, for crissake, pick up the phone! It's called the era of instant communication for a reason, - he tells Sammy's voicemail in a week and a half, one hunt later. - Listen, I understand it that you are pissed at me as well as at Dad. But unless you want me to freak out and come search for you at your fucking law school, thus totally embarrassing you in front of all your new pals, you pick up the bloody phone! Just call me back, okay, Sammy? Just tell me you're all right.

Sam doesn't call back that day, or the next one, or day after that. Dad takes off to a solo hunt, telling Dean to go wait for him at Bobby's. He refuses to talk about his youngest. Dean calls Sam once again (voicemail) and takes I-80 to San-Francisco instead. He arrives in Palo Alto two days later and for a pair of hours just walks around the campus in a vague hope that Sam might suddenly appear around a corner. He checks nearest Starbucks and a bookstore. He finds a group of law freshmen and asks them if they know a very tall guy with shaggy hair. Finally, there's nothing left to do then to go and ask some secretary girl in the administration office about what group Sam's in and what is his schedule. That's when Dean finds out that Sam has never shown up here.  
He must look terrified because the girl asks him if he wants to sit down and have a glass of water. 

\- Is he missing? - she asks.  
Dean knows the rule. The Rule, that's it. No police. Low profile. Keep it under radar. But Sammy is missing, damn it. His call to Dad goes straight to voicemail.  
\- Do you want to report a missing person? - a woman in her late 40-s asks him. The secretary girl stands besides her, both of them looking truly concerned.  
\- How much time before his classes start? - he asks in return.  
\- They have already started. It's been a week today.  
Sammy would never skip classes. Also now Dean is developing a full-blown panic attack. He somehow forces himself to speak despite the fact that his heart goes 200 beats per minute.  
\- I have to check with our Dad and Sam's friends, - he hears himself saying. - Thank you for your time, I'll probably call again later. He might just be... you know, at his girlfriend's or such.  
Except that Sammy doesn't have a girlfriend. Actually, as it suddenly occurs to Dean, he had never seen his little brother with a girl at all. Sammy is more books' man than ladies' man, he guess. He steps outside, in the bright daylight of late August in Palo Alto. Bobby picks up by the third ring.


	2. Chapter 2

\- Calm down, son, - says Bobby, and it's strange because he sounds guilty, though Dean has no idea why. - So what about that ticket? Did he get on the bus? Where to exactly?  
\- The bus station was two towns down from where we were, Bobby. He had to hitchhike there or something. He just. Told us about Stanford and stuff... and left. Anyway it’s not like they keep records on the bus passengers, you know. I've been thinking... Can you track his phone? It’s switched off. Has been for two days now.  
\- Yeah, I know a guy who can do that if you have his IMEI. Do ya? Tell you what, call me back in an hour or two. I prolly should've something for you by then. Grab something to eat in the meantime, wouldya? 

There were few weeks at the end of spring when Dean was seventeen when he was speeding around Lincoln, Missouri in his black Impala with local girls, windows rolled down, Led Zeppelin cranked up. He never took corners on two wheels - his Baby was too much of a lady for that - but with such a beauty for a car he didn’t have to to impress the girls. That May he was a bit in love with both that chick Rhonda and her friend Julia, the one that had hippie parents and three older siblings named Sky, Diamond and Lucy. He had already dropped out of high school by then and was spending his evenings playing pool at an Irish pub. There were sayings like “not everyone can be Irish, someone has to drive” written on the walls there and he kinda liked it, seemed funny. He could hold the table for hours while Sammy was doing his homework in the corner. Then Dad came back and Sammy never managed to turn in his final essay. That was no big deal though. Seemed not to be a big deal. But Sammy was bitching about it for weeks nonetheless. He must had have his plans of enrolling in a college already back then. It hurts Dean to think about the years of deceit, of little Sammy keeping his big secret to himself. To realize that he had somehow failed his brother so bad that he didn’t trust him enough to share. So much for being the awesome big brother then. 

Dean finishes his beer and presses cold can to his forehead, angling his head sideways to watch cars passing by. It starts to rain, and car headlights reflect on the wet road. Sky is covered with dark clouds. He starts engine and drives along the road heading to San Jose, looking for a diner, and finally pulls over at a KFC and gets a twister and a coffee. Then he calls back Bobby. 

\- I talked to the guy, he has tracked Sam’s phone to the east end of the Southern Cactus avenue in Vegas, - Bobby says, sounding discontent and grouchy. - Any ideas to why? Didn’t you tell me he had bus ticket to LA?  
\- Yeah. That’s what he had told me and Dad. Thanks, Bobby.  
\- Wait a minute. You’d better call me again in the morning, tell me if ya find anything or need a back up. 10-4 on that?  
\- Yeah, sure. Thanks again, Bobby.

Dean drives south through the heavy rain - traffic is a bitch in Bay area - and passes huge sign advertising the “Winchester Mystery House” in San Jose to the left of 101. Now, that is weird. He doesn’t have time for unrelated-to-the-case-weird though. There are lots of minor accidents on the road as he takes left turn to I-5. and suddenly there is a main storm upon him with lightning bolts and thunder, and it’s raining so hard that the windshield wiper can’t help it. Dean makes it to Vegas at 3 a.m., sets alarm clock for 6 a.m and falls asleep in the backseat.


	3. Chapter 3

There are one-story adobe houses, painted light orange and light brown, on each side of the street, few of them still under construction, with a few cars parked nearby and no people in sight. Slowly cruising around the place Dean sees a 20-years old Ford truck and a damaged Dodge Neon, both parked along an (apparently) abandoned construction site with a large placard mounted on the fence saying something about paradise, gorgeous townhome and gated community with friendly neighbours. There’s a happy family - a father, a mother, two children and a dog - on the other placard round the corner. The faces have faded, but the smiles still stay on. A bunch of obnoxious cars is parked in the front yard of a house with the white window blinds, two blocks down from the happy family fence, and two pickup trucks are rusting near another one not far from that. The whole area is rather quiet with the freeway buzz pleasantly decreased by distance. Phone signal is poor (still not a text or a call from Sammy). It’s 6:15 a.m., and sun is already well above the horizon, intense enough to make Dean feel it gonna be one of them really hot days. As he gazes over the flat land beyond the houses that goes all the way to the mountains he wonders what Sam could possibly do in this godforsaken place. 

He gets back forty minutes later after a nice and greasy breakfast at Denny’s on the I-15 and finds two other cars - a new Toyota SUV and a small tented truck - parked at the house with white blinds. Those are still shut down but now there is a middle-aged woman with a short bleached hair on the porch, shaking hands with a fat guy in Abercrombie sports pants and t-shirt with a math formula printed on the back. The door is wide open, and there is definitely some kind of a demon’s trap painted on the inside of it. 

Dean tries his best to make it look as though he is just driving past but he'd slowed down and the woman notices. She glances at the impala and a flicker of surprised amusement crosses her face. The guy staggers from the porch to his car - Dean sees it in the sideview mirror. In two seconds the SUV passes Dean, the face of the driver all covered in tears. 

Bobby answers on the first ring and says he cannot think of any female hunter who’d be similar to the given description.  
\- What’s the address again? - he asks. - Sounds like a nasty place to me. Just keep in mind that…  
\- ...the world ain't all sunshine and rainbows, yeah, I know, Bobby. I'd be careful.

Bobby snorts and hangs up.

It's already feels too hot for flannels. Dean parks Impala under a huge cactus that looks like it has seen better days and returns to the house with the white blinds. The door is closed now and the building could've look abandoned if not for the five cars still parked in the front yard.

Dean makes a long cut in the tent of the truck with his Bowie knife and peers inside. There is a pile of duffel bags and backpacks ion the floor, and when he helps himself with a flashlight he notices blood stains on some of them.

\- Hey! Need any help? - says a male voice from behind him.

He turns back, flashes a smile to a short man who looks tense and holds his hands in his pockets, and asks if someone here has seen his dog - well, it's actually his girlfriend's dog, you know, - white, small, fluffy; she ran away from them half an hour ago when they'd stopped to look at the map. 

The guy smiles back. He has bad teeth and his smile doesn't actually reach his eyes.  
\- It's your lucky day, kid, - he tells Dean. - My old lady's found your dog just a ten minutes ago. Here, come inside.


	4. Meanwhile Sam

The bus is over crowded, and there is a guy who’s been released from jail just yesterday, sitting next to Sam and talking about his plans to move to Montana and become a deer hunter for 4 hours in a row. Sam doesn’t listen, not really, but he catches word “hunter” and... well, let's just say that it doesn’t make him feel any better. He is still blindingly angry at Dad. He's also angry - furious probably would be a better word for it - at Dean for worshiping the ground the bastard walks on. Sam is still full of arguments, still is thinking about better words to yell at John. 

It helps, the being angry thing. Staring out of the window at the dull sky and dark mountains he keeps thinking that he might never see his family again.

There are two unanswered calls from Dean on his phone. Sam looks at the screen and switches the phone off. Just cannot hear his brother’s voice right now.  
It’s better for him to go cold turkey on Dean. It's probably better for Dean, too.

He falls asleep somewhere between Denver and Grand Junction and sleeps half the way to Vegas. The highway stretches into the distance, mountains on both sides of it. Yellow lines meet the horizon, sky is grey.  
\- I am my own independent person, Sam keeps thinking.  
Somehow it doesn’t sound right. Doesn't make him feel all excited and happy.  
Still.  
He is on the bus to LA and then it'll take him only one more short trip to get to Palo Alto. Let’s celebrate small victories! He misses his brother so fucking much already.  
He’s pathetic.  
\- Hey, you gonna meet some friends in LA or what? - asks him the ex-convict.  
\- Nah, ain’t got nobody, - Sam hears himself answering.  
He’s pretty sure it’s a line from one of the disgusting songs that Dean loves so much to make him listen.  
\- No family? - the ex-convict sounds kinda sad for him. Just great.  
\- Nope, - says Sam and turns his head back to the window.  
\- So, why are you travelling? Just for the heck of it?  
Sam wonders how the guy has survived his time in jail, being so pushing.  
\- Guess so, - he answers. - Listen, I’d like to get some shut-eye here, okay?  
Bus makes a long stop in Vegas, and when Sam comes back from a vending machine with a frozen doughnut and a Coke he finds new passengers on board. At least the ex-convict is gone, thanks for the life’s little pleasures. Sam takes his seat and closes his eyes.  
An hour later there is a sudden thumping noise from the bus rear and the driver pulls over. He checks the tires and opens the doors.  
\- Have a cigarette outside, if you wanna, - he shouts. - We’ve got three flat tires at once, can you believe that? I’ll make a call so that they’ll send another bus to pick you up, folks, just take it easy, you’ll be back on the road in half an hour.  
Sam steps outside.  
They are somewhere in the Mojave desert. There are clusters of yellow-and-violet wildflowers and creosote bushes on either side of the road. The light is already beginning to drain from the sky. The road shoulder is wide, leaving enough space for several passengers to smoke staying between the bus and the ditch.  
\- Errmmm… Folks? - the driver suddenly says. - Can you check your phones? Mine doesn’t get any signal, do yours?  
Cars keeps passing by. Sam’s phone says no signal as well, and he decides to stretch his legs a bit. Seems like his bus ain’t going anywhere any time soon. So Sam walks along the shoulder, thinking about Dean and his Dad and wondering what they are doing right now and feeling lonely like he has never been, and then there is a girl with a black pony-tail in an old “Toyota”, who pulls over and smiles at him.  
He smiles back. The girl is in her early twenties, very good-looking, with lips shaped like a heart. The type that Dean’d be glad to spend some time with.  
\- Looks like you guys have a problem, - she shouts from the open window. - Need a ride? I’m heading to LA, gonna be a staarrrr!  
Sam laughs and nods.  
\- I need to get my bag from the bus, can you wait a sec?  
She rolls her eyes.  
\- Yeah, okay, just make it quick.  
Sam is back in two minutes.  
\- I'm so thankful, - he says, getting in.  
And then there is darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

The guy lies to Dean’s face, obviously, because Dean doesn’t have any freaking dog. Or a girlfriend, for that matter. Still, he was going to check the apartment anyway and this is as good an excuse as any to get inside. He slaps on a fake smile and steps on the porch.  
\- Thank god you’ve found her! Where’s she? - he says, pulling the door open.

It opens right into a main room with a kitchen corner to the left and an old couch in front of the huge tv-screen to the right. There is a closed back door beside the kitchen corner, a flight of stairs leading upward and a dark corridor behind it. The woman with the bleached hair is sitting on the couch, counting banknotes - twenties and fifties, but mostly fifties, looks like, and Dean has never seen as much cash at once in his life. 

She turns her head for a second and then is back to counting but Dean knows that the guy behind him is about to do something silly from the way her eyes get wide. Dean is ready. Has been from the moment he saw the guy. He jumps aside and turns at the same time, grabbing for the gun that the man has in his left hand, and the gun goes off and Dean is alive and the world around him is sharp and fast, and he kicks the guy in the knee, so that he fells on the floor with a comically angry face, and kicks him again just to be sure, and glances at the woman and finds her lying shot dead on the couch, bleached hair spattered with blood. 

And then he picks up the gun from under a chair and turns to the Devil’s trap on the door, and now that he can have a proper look at it it turns out to be not a Devil’s trap at all but something completely different - some poorly drawn protective sigil that he has never seen before. 

The guy on the floor is trying to stand up, and he is cursing and snarling at Dean, so he punches him in the chin, knocking him out cold. Dean then ties the guy's hands behind his back with a belt and goes to check on the woman. Yeah, fucking dead as a doornail, just great. Now he has some time to look around. 

The place is filthy. There is rubbish and stuff everywhere on the dirty carpet. He slowly moves around with the gun in his hand. The bathtub is full of hair, the mattress covers in the small bedroom upstairs are filthy and the rug beside the bed is full of crumbs. There is a thick layer of oily dust on the tables and surfaces; and scuffs all over the walls. There are mouse droppings in the kitchen drawers, along with yet another clip of cash. Not a sound from the upper floor so far and Dean goes back to check on the guy on the floor - still unconscious - and on second thought he decides to tie his legs as well. He snaps photo of the sigil and sends it to Bobby, asking if it looks familiar to him. Then he goes outside to the tented truck. 

He climbs inside it and goes through all the bags there. And sure enough just as he thought when he caught a glimpse of it for the first time one of the duffel bags on the the truck’s floor is Sam’s indeed. Thank God the bag doesn’t have any blood stains on it like some others do but the whole picture still looks pretty gruesome for his liking. He takes the bag and jumps off the truck, and that’s when his phone rings.

\- It’s a jinn-related sigil, but a strange one, - says Bobby. - I wonder what sort of trouble you idjits got yourself into this time. Did you find anything else?

Dean tells him about the bag.  
\- Do you need me there? - Bobby asks after a few seconds of a shaken silence.  
\- Nah, thanks, Bobby. Better stay home and go through your books, try to find anything about the sigil, - Dean answers. - I’ve got myself a hostage to interrogate. Speaking of which...I prolly have to go now.  
\- Don’t lose it, - and Bobby hangs up.

For a second Dean considers calling John but so far he has no answers and absolutely no idea as to what’s going on and he doesn’t want to waste his time on arguing and getting verbally punched in the face, much as he deserves that. 

Meantime the tied up guy has come round and is now looking at him with intense hatred, which is just fine with Dean. He drags the guy to a wall and sits him up. His tee gets torn at the neck and Dean sees some kind of a tattoo on the guy’s chest. He rips the tee-shirt more, and here it is - another protective sigil not older than a week or two from the look of it.

\- Talk, - he tells the guy, playing with his Bowie knife dangerously close to guy’s eye. - What’s with the bags in the truck? -  
\- Where do you keep the guys whom they belong to? Talk, pig-fucker. Give me a reason to not slit your throat right fucking now. Or I can take out your eye for starters if you don’t give me some answers ASAP. 

The guy is trying to play cool but his pupils dilate and Dean knows he’s just whistling in the dark; the man sure as hell knows he’s in deep trouble.  
\- Tell me about the jinn and the people you’ve kidnapped, - he says. - The guys whom those duffel bags belong to. Where are they?

The guy swallows hard and mutters something that sounds very much like “desert”. Dean’s blood runs cold.  
\- Are they alive?  
And he doesn’t wait for the answer, just can’t stand it if the answer is “no”, so he pushes the guy up and tells him:  
\- Take me to where you hold them. GO. 

He’s busy trying to drag the guy out of the house when he hears a cracking sound from behind.


	6. Chapter 6

There's a new drug in town, the nice blue one. 

\- Wanna something nice? - dealers shout to regular customers in the dark corners of LA night clubs, where music is loud and and where life seems a little more bearable, a tiny bit less ordinary than outside.

Something nice for wannabe stars to calm them down before auditions and cheer them up after rejection. Something nice for gloomy adolescents who are starting to suspect that their life's gonna be as dull and useless as their parents' is. Strong nice stuff for desperate housewives and their rich ageing husbands. 

It's a real nice little something though, no side effects except for some dehydration but if one remembers to drink enough water before and after usage than there is no side effects at all. And what is more important, Nice is kinda legal. 

See, Gary, you're not gonna get in any trouble with it like Dave did with his cocaine last winter, pour bastard. 

Yeah so what if it's being sold under the counter. Fact is, if cops search a car and find something blue and liquid in a small plastic bottle they can't do shit about it. Nobody knows what is it that makes this stuff working - you know what I'm saying? - tell you, buddy, nobody knows, they had it tested and it turned out to be just water, only water with some salts in it and no illegal substances at all. Similar to human tears, that's what I've heard, so cops can't do shit. It's a real magic, buddy, something supernatural, so to say.

And know what's even better? You can't overdose on this stuff, you simply can't, you know what I'm saying? If you accidentally take too much you'll just get the show going for a longer time and that's it. Just don't forget to drink water, you know what I'm saying, drink water before you take it and keep a bottle of water or OJ or whatever close to you for afterwards. That's it, yeah. It's new on the market but already in a high demand, you know what I'm saying? I get it from my regular guys, rumor has it that there is some genius guy - Mr White, you know what I'm saying, who runs a lab in Nevada or whatever, that's what I've heard. Sip one teaspoon of it and enjoy the show. It's like lucid dream, you know what I'm saying, it's like second life and all your dreams come true, satisfaction guaranteed. 3D experience. Yeah, you can screw your favourite actresses or porn stars, you know what I'm saying? It's forty for two doses, can treat a friend, you know what I'm saying? 

So Gary buys it. 

That guy Kip at the studio, he usually knows what he is talking about, and if he swears that this shit is safe than it's probably at least not deadly dangerous. Something like weed, probably. Gary drives home, kisses his fucking wife hello - that bitch gonna be too expensive to divorce - asks about his daughter who turns out to still be at her friend' yacht, and locks himself in master's bedroom. Gary is forty-seven years old, not your usual drug user you'd think, but he is stressed and depressed like half of the guys in the business, his latest movie where he was one of the producers failed at the box office and he's just genuinely tired, just want something... well, something nice at the end of the day. Half an hour of stress-free living. He takes a sip from the bottle. The deep blue liquid does in fact taste like slightly salty water. 

And than he is like Alice in Wonderland - down, down, down the rabbit-hole - to a very vivid dream that feels like a real life, the life way better than the one that he's actually living. 

In his dream he is married to his high school sweetheart who still looks fantastic (and he loves her with all his heart, he has long forgotten that he was once capable of such a feeling at all) and they live happily together with no children - just two dogs that they both are very fond of. They make love in their patio near the huge pool with a view on LA, naked under the warm breeze and sweet sunshine. His movie is a huge success, there are even not-so-subtle talks about "Oscar". 

It's like meeting a jinn, a fantastic wish master, and having all dreams fulfilled. His life is perfect, it's fulfilling and enthralling. For a first time in a long long period Gary Mesham is happy.

He wakes up in about half an hour after what felt like two weeks of the best time he could've imagined. He's tremendously thirsty and a bit weak but that's it, no more side effects besides that, nothing scary at all. At first he feels sad that it turned out to be a dream (gosh, did it feel like reality!). Still, he's a grown-up man, used to life's punches. And even the memory of the dream is like a motherly hug to him, it feels like something so warm and sincere, like a duvet, like a cozy protection from the harsh world around him. And now Gary feels that he is probably strong enough to live another day without nervous breakdown. He remembers sex with Lina, his high school sweetheart and dream's wife, and smiles. He would definitely need more Nice stuff.

Next day when he asks, Kip says that the price went up and it's now forty for a dose.  
It's doesn't take long before Gary starts to spend all his nights in Nicely-induced sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

He opens his eyes and tries to sit up, and finds out that that's impossible. There is a funny smell in the - room, or where is it that he is now, lying on a floor among some dirty duffel bags. The floor is shaking - he's been thrown in the back of a tented truck and the truck's moving, he realises all of a sudden. His head hurts and everything looks kinda blurry. Ok, first thing first: who is he?

He is a grown-up man, that's for sure, dressed in a pair of old jeans and layers of shirts and t-shirts... his hands are handcuffed behind his back and his legs are wired - not tied with a rope but actually wired with a metal wire and it bloody hurts. Is he a criminal? He wouldn't be surprised if he is. But cops don't wire people and put them in the back of a truck with a dozen of dirty duffels, do they? He tries to remember his name - something short, he thinks. 

Dave? John? It seems to be at the tip of his tongue, all he has to do is concentrate - damn, does his head hurt! Fuck the name, he has to get the fuck out of the truck, handcuffing and wiring obviously are for nothing good.

Now wait a second - he's got a paperclip in his left sleeve, one that he can actually get out with his fingernails, and his hands seem to remember quite well how to undo the handcuffs with it... Awesome, since his legs are numb already and he has to unwire himself ASAP. He guesses he probably is a lawbreaker after all, but hey, he's not gonna judge himself for the decisions he doesn't remember. So what, he has a paperclip at hand and knows how to deal with handcuffs. He is a deliquent all right but those who had taken him and are now driving him somewhere in the back of an ugly truck - by the lack of the sounds from outside he can make a pretty good guess they are in a middle of nowhere already - those guys? Definitely not good people either.

Besides, he might as well be a spy or a FBI agent. He kinda remembers wearing a suit.

It takes him ten minutes to unwire his legs and massage them so that the blood would circulate again, and it feels like he is running out of time by then. He hurriedly searches through the duffels around him - clothes, more clothes, textbooks.... is it a blood stain? A flashlight, knives... awesome, at least one of the bags has something useful. He pokes his head out of the truck and finds himself in a desert. Sun is shining brightly, no city or a town or a mere hut in sight, just rocks, hills, red soil, dusty violet flowers and long gray line of the road up to the horizon behind the truck. He isn't dressed for the weather, that's for sure. 

Trucks slows down, turning on a sandy path between low hills and red rocks. 

It occures to him suddenly that one of the duffels might be actually his - no time to guess which one, he'd have to take all of them and try to figure it out later, so he starts to throw them from behind the truck one after another and then jumps out himself, clutching last bag close to his head and his chest, and that was stupid and it hurts like hell, but at least he's alive and his legs are not broken, so he counts it as a win. He rolls to the side of the path and hides behind some prickly bush hoping that there are no rattlesnakes around. 

Five minutes later, the truck has long since disappeared behind the multicolored hills, he sits in a hidden place between two big rocks and goes through the duffels more thoroughly.

There are some papers and a laptop in one of them - an old one, useless, since the battery has long died out - and a paper notebook with notes in clear handwriting, sort of a diary, actually, starting with a short note dated Jan 24, 1999 - "I hate it when he does it to Dean; but at least he'd called this time, the bastard". 

Last entry is of 28 August, 2001. "I'm on a bus to Stanford. Should be exited. Miss him like hell instead. For the first time in years have no gun on me. (Later) Bus got broken and we are stuck in the desert. Bet Dad would be suspicious already.   
I miss him. It's lucky my cell isn't getting any signal or I'd been calling him just to hear "Sammy". Get a grip, you princess, move the fuck on". 

There is sort of a half-hearted attempt to write To Do list under this but it has only three lines. 1. get a dorm 2. get the books - library 3. get a job (library?). 

Guy is a total geek, he thinks. What with the habit to carry a gun, though? 

And then it occurs to him that this Sammy guy had never made it to Stanford, if he' s right in his assumption that the duffels belong to those who were kidnapped like he had been himself. And he just knows that he is right. Hell, Sammy can be dead now for all he knows, his body drying up somewhere in the desert.

His mouth feels dry. Luckily there are two bottles of warm gatorade in one of the other duffels. He finishes one in three huge gulps and tries to think strategy. He needs a plan. 

Track the truck. 

It couldn't go far from the place where he is hiding, not really. The path isn't easy to ride, so it's probably five, ten, twenty miles maximum, otherwise the driver've'd taken another turn. What's at the end of the road? A pile of dead bodies or some kind of a hut where hostages are held? Only one way to find out.

He finds half-finished bottle of water in "Sammy"s duffel and takes it with him along with the knives and the flashlight, then hangs one of the bags with clothes on his shoulder and starts climbing on a huge rock above him. The road is almost indistinguishable. Still, he can see it, and as he is looking around he also hears something: gunshots, he thinks, only rather far and he can't tell where from. He has to take off his shirt and make himself some sort of a turban with it. After that, he is ready to go. Traces of the truck tires are still visible enough to keep him moving fast and focused, like a hunter on a hunt.

Get to the end of the road, see what's there, get the truck or another vehicle, if there are any, get out of the desert, contact the police, give them coordinates, save whoever of the duffelbags' owners is alive... It'a sketchy plan but still a plan.


	8. Chapter 8

Dirk just wants to get rich. 

He needs to get rich because he can’t fucking stand his life anymore. He hates it that he knows all the shanty towns that are there from North Florida to South California and can tell difference between the bad and the not-so-bad ones. He hates it that at the age of 17 he has a favourite brand of canned beans but has never ever tried a chicken basquaise. He used to look up to his Dad. Well, not anymore. Those feelings are long gone. He loathes his old man for being fine with their shitty lifestyle. Hell, Dad is even proud of it! Dad and his stupid talks about saving people and hunting things.  
Whatever.  
If Dirk has to listen to his Dad preaching about hunting one more time he’s gonna go nuts.

Dirk doesn’t remember his life before all of it started. He was three when a werewolf killed his mom and his older sister right in the backyard of their house in Natchez, Mississippi, few minutes into 5th of July. Dirk was sleeping in his bed at the time. His father emptied his gun at the beast and nothing happened. The werewolf ate his mom’ and his sister’s hearts while dad just stood there terrified. And then the beast attacked him - and Dad threw at him his grandmother’s knife that was lying on an empty plate on the porch. He did it, and somehow he managed to get the beast in the eye. The knife was made of silver. His grandmother used it to cut fruits.

Dirk has listened to this story dozens of times. How the werewolf screamed like a wounded demon and died in agony. How the dead beast turned into a naked woman afterwards. How Dad dug up a grave for the woman and later called 911 telling police that his wife and daughter had been killed by a wild animal. And how he later saw a picture of the werewolf woman in a newspaper. Some bookkeeper. A missing person. Dad told Dirk that her photos were on all the bus stops, shops, schoolfences and bars in the area till late November. And all those months she was lying burried in their backyard. Under a rose bush.

His father started drinking then. Drinking and talking to strangers at the bars and gas stations. Trying to gather some data.  
First year was not so fruitful, but at the end of it... He met Bill Harvelle who turned out to be a supernatural hunter.  
Just Dirk’s luck! If not for Harvelle, Bob Deveraux might’ve had calmed down after a year or two. 

Bob and Bill started hunting together, leaving Dirk with Bill’s wife Ellen. Then one time Dad went to visit his in-laws in Oregon and Bill went on a hunt with some loser and got himself killed. Whatever. Since then it was always just him and his Dad.

Dirk has never tried to explain his thoughts to Bob though. The man is a maniac, plain and simple. All of the hunters are. Dirk isn’t buying any of the shit they are trying to sell him. Hunters consider themselves to be some kind of a super secret service guys, FBI or CIA. Whatever. In fact they are just a bunch of low-lifers with lots of ammo and no future. Dirk is tired as hell of being one of them. 

There is nothing wonderful in driving across the country in a rusty Oldmobile with dozens of rounds of ammunition, guns, rifles and knives in the trunk. There is nothing thrilling in living on the edge of society and knowing that every cop who pulls you over might as well put you in jail for life if only he finds the thermo box with a chopped off head of a vampire in the backseat. The vampire looks like a teenage girl. Good luck with trying to make police believe that it was she who killed all the other girls in town.  
They were lucky that that one time when it really happened the cop was eager to just give them a ticket and let go.

Dirk thinks about money day and night.  
He needs it to get out.  
And, hell, he doesn’t want to go and start working 9-to-5 job for shitty salary.  
Like fuck he is doing that.  
This country OWNS him.  
It FAILED him. 

He wants revenge. He wants fucking everything.

"Stop drinking cappuccino at the Starbacks, they say on the radio, skip your daily latte and you’ll save ten grands in ten years". Well thank you very much for the useless advice. Ten grands is not gonna make it for Dirk.  
Not to mention that he already doesn’t drink bloody cappuccino.

He is 20 when it dawns upon him: he was sitting on a goldmine all the time!  
He has resources that ordinary folks have not. Supernatural can give him billions if only sell it right.  
For the first time in his life he starts studying supernatural lore passionately. 

Dirk is not stupid. He was a straight-A student till the year when Dad made him drop out of school. He is making contacts, talks to guys here and to guys there. And he waits.  
Some of the things that they are hunting are too dangerous to be held captive, some are plain useless. And then finally, fucking finally when Dirk is 26 years old they got a whiff of a djinn in New Mexico. It’s Dirk’s best chance. 

They are driving on I-10, thick with truck traffic, road climbing up out of the flat yellow desert that surrounds El Paso and Dirk thinks:  
\- I’m going to kill Dad.

That’s just how it is, Bob would never let him do what he wants to do.  
Good thing is that Dirk had never actually liked the guy.  
Road winds along a dried-out creek with eroded stone formations resembling huge ugly men, climbs over nountain pass where silk roses grow on the both sides of the road and heads down to a tiny town - Bob Deveraux's final destination.  
Dirk's heart sings.  
He is a killer, after all, born and raised.


	9. Chapter 9

\- Rise and shine! - familiar voice purrs above him. 

Sam holds his breath.

\- Morning, Sammy. I can tell that you are awake.

Sam rolls onto his back and opens his eyes. Dean is grinning down to him with a coffee mug in his hands, dressed in his FBI agent’ black pants and crisp white shirt unbuttoned at the neck, the light linen clinging to his muscles in a slightly pornographic way that makes Sam feel familiar prickle of remorse and desire. His brother is so beautiful and strong and so unaware of it at the same time, and he’s going to just go and waste his beauty and strength on their Dad’s never-ending war, and knowing that makes Sam want to hug him and hold him in his arms and tell him how beautiful a person he is, while at the same time he feels like screaming and breaking things and running away and never turning back because it’s so unfair that he can’t stand it. Can’t see it with his own eyes and stay calm and sane. It’s only a swift passing feeling though and then Sam is genuinely happy to see his big brother.

\- Whatcha doing here, - he says, smiling back.

Dean raises an eyebrow.

He is clean-shaven, sandy hair slightly wet after the shower and he looks better than Sam had seen him in months. Relaxed, not exhausted or bruised or something. His green eyes meet Sam’s with warm amusement and for a second Sam just lets himself lay there and enjoy the moment. He feels well-rested himself, not hungry or thirsty or tired - just a bit confused. 

He is simultaneously glad that Dean is with him again and puzzled trying to understand how it is possible. Last thing he remembers is his Greyhound bus being broken down in the middle of nowhere in Nevada. Than, there’s blackness. 

\- I’ve made you breakfast, little brother, - says Dean, holding out his hand. - You gonna be late to school, get outta your bed! What’s with all the staring? Do I have something in my teeth? 

Right. Stanford. Wait - what? 

\- What are you doing here? - Sam asks again, as he sits up in the bed and finds out that he is wearing only a pair of expensive looking black frigo boxers - frigo being a brand name, obviously, printed on them in silver letters.

Something is off. Dean replies with an enigmatic smile and bends to tousle his hair. Sam instinctively jerks away with an indignant squeak that makes his brother laugh.

\- What are YOU doing in bed at 8:30? Come on, I gonna give you a ride. Dad and Mom are meeting us later for dinner. Dad’s so proud of you I thought he was gonna talk Bobby’s ears off. Well done, Sammy.

\- Mom? Wait - isn’t she…

\- Isn’t she what? Sammy, seriously, are you okey? Jess just called, said you were kinda strange yesterday evening, asked me if I think you had been studying too much. Does your head hurt or something?  
\- I’m fine, - Sam replies. 

He is so not. 

How could it be that Mom is alive? Who the hell is Jess? Was he wounded on a hunt and lost his memories? Actually, have there be any hunts or had he only had a very vivid dream of their hunting life this night? He glances at Dean who looks relaxed, well-fed, happy and comfortable in his preppy outfit. Not a ragged drifter Sam is familiar with. 

Dean bends down again and kisses his forehead so fast that Sam simply lets him like he is still a five-years-old. 

\- No fever, - says his brother authoritatively. - Ok, I’ll wait in the kitchen then. Get up, I’ll drop you at your posh school on the way to my new shiny office. Least I can do is to show there for five minutes to say thank you to Mr. Smith. Will meet you later, I already told'im it's an important day for my lil' brother.

Curiouser and curiouser.

\- You have a new shiny office?

Dean’s eyelashes flutter and he grins at Sam with that bright smile that could thaw the inner circles of hell.

\- You bet I have! I got a promotion. Hurry up, shower and then breakfast, princess. We can talk in the car. 

Dean glances pointedly at his golden wristwatch - leaving Sam speechless by the fact that he has a golden wristwatch - and exits the room. 

Slowly, Sam gets out of the bed. There are no knives under his pillow, no guns in his nightstand.  
No salt on the windowsill.  
Ok then. Shower seems like a plan for now.  
It turns out to be a nice bathroom too, big, bright and spotless with good water pressure and fluffy white towels. Sam doesn’t remember ever taking shower in a place so nice and so foreign.  
He definitely needs to do a lot of research in a closest library.

But somehow the strangeness of all this doesn’t bother him anymore as soon as he finishes the shower, dresses in a pair of blue jeans by Calvin Klein and a black t-shirt that he finds in a huge wardrobe along with other expensive clothes, and meets Dean downstairs. He feels content and at peace with everything around him, amnesia included.  
He probably still is going to deal with research but later. It can wait. He's just so happy to see his brother healthy, nicely dressed and energetic that he feels like singing. Happy to be clean and well rested himself. To hear once again that Dad is proud of him whatever that thing that Sam did right is. 

Sam is happy. It's a strange feeling but a really nice one. He eats his oatmeal with fresh strawberries and blueberries and smiles at his brother who goes on and on about some folks from his work that Sam has no knowledge about.

\- All right then, - Dean says finally, finishing his second cup of coffee and smiling back at Sam, - let's take you to your diploma ceremony, shall we?


	10. 10

Sun beats down unmercifully and by now he has to forge his own path through cacti and prickly bushes, having lost all signs of the tyre tracks. He has drunk the last of his water a while ago and damn it, he probably needs to start marking his trail with cairns or something just to be sure that he’d be able to find his way back to the main road. There are dozens of red rocky hills that he has to clamber up only to skid down and face yet another ascent. And the heat… his lips are swollen and his tongue feels thick.

He finds a patch of shade behind a rock formation and sits down. The hell was he thinking? Even five miles hiking in a weather like this can easily turn into a struggle for survival. He licks inside the bottle, trying to get some moisture. Than a green prickly pear catches his eyes. He cuts several cactus pads, cleans it from the thorns, slices with one of the knives and sucks liquid out of it. It’s not exactly tasty but right now he’s not picky about what he drinks. He sucks some more. Nope. It ain’t gonna help him much. He shouldn’t’ve jumped off the truck, being lost in a desert could turn out to be more dangerous than any bad guys could ever be. 

Once again he clambers up a hill and scans the rocks and sand surrounding him. There are patches of green foliage about a mile down from where he is standing, and as he observes it he catches a glimpse of a moving there - a bird or a small animal? Anyway, it’s a sign he was looking for. It means that there might be water there. He hikes to the foliage and thank God, there it is - what mexicans call a tinaja - a pocket of water on the bottom of a small canyon. It seems like there had been heavy rains just recently judging by the amount of water and the freshness of it. He fills his bottles with it and then drinks one of them in three gulps. 

The temperature must be well in three digits by now. It feels as if a big furnace is blowing in his face. He has no other choice than to stay near the water for the next few hours. He ain’t gonna do nobody any good if he dies from a heatstroke. Grimly, he sits down in the shadow near some kind of a hole in the rocks where cooler wind blows through. Those unfortunate folks whose duffels he’d found in the truck probably weren’t gonna make it anyway. Or they might have been dead all along. Still, he intends to hike back to the main road later and start looking for the tyre tracks from there once again. Maybe this time he’d manage to follow them properly... he is definitely concussed and wasn’t in his right mind when he tried it for the first time. It’s stupid that he’d jumped off that truck so early. He wasn’t unarmed, right? He’d found the knives. Could’ve try his luck with them. Jim Bowie once brought a knife to a gunfight and won, so there is always a chance... 

He’s sitting without a move as an overgrown lizard, with his eyes closed, and tries to catch glimpses of memories that wheel through his mind as some kind of a slide show. A man, older, dark, tall, cries to him “run! Run!!!” 

A girl with a dark skin and long curly hair kisses him passionately. 

He drives a knife in the heart of a wolf and the wolf’s frame melts under his hands, dissolves, turns into something different - into a naked woman with blond hair and beautiful face, so innocent and calm, and her lips are blue and her eyes are empty… 

A guy in a trucker cap points a shotgun to someone who stands right next to him: “I swear to God, John, get off my yard or I’ll blow a hole in that goddamn head of yours!” 

He wakes up hours later when the sun begins its slow descent. Moon is already up in the sky, round and pale since the sky is still bright. He turns and starts his way back. 

It takes him an hour to get to the high hill that stands above the road. The sun casts last tangerine rays on the hills and rock formations, paints sky shades of orange and red. It’s gonna be dark any minute now. Somewhere in the desert a light is moving, disappearing and then glowing again, closer by every minute. It disappears for the last time behind a close hill and doesn’t reappear. He waits for a few minutes and starts moving in that direction.

The desert is quiet, all he hears are crickets and the scouring of wind-borne sand across the road now and then. He moves in silence, fast and fluid, like a snake. Up the hill, crouching down behind a rock, he looks down and sees the truck - it feels like the morning was a century ago - but it certainly is the same old tented truck that he had jumped off in the early hours of the day. It’s parked with the engine running and headlights on. A ghostly figure comes back to the truck from somewhere, opens the door but doesn’t get in. Instead the driver - since he must be the driver - lights a cigarette and takes his phone out of his pocket. The moon's silvery light bounces off the rocks and the truck cab. 

\- Hey, - the driver says. - Looks like I’ve lost him. 

A pause.

\- It’s not my bloody fault! The fucker’s got thicker skull that I’d thought! I’ve spent the whole day in this bloody heat trying to track the kid down! But it looks like he’d hitchhiked right back to Vegas or somewhere, y’know? I’ve just stumbled upon these bags here like, a minute ago. Yeah, those bags, what other bags I could be talking about? So, he… I think he jumped off right after the turn… like, hundred feet from the road. Well I’m sorry I don’t have eyes on my back! He was handcuffed and unconscious, for crissake!

A pause.

\- Just didn’t want more blood stains in my car than there already are! Ok listen, it’s no big deal. The kid’s probably too scared to cause us any trouble anyway. I mean, the guy's killed Morin, hasn't he? It’s not like he’s gonna call cops… Right. So what you are saying, I have to lay low and wait? I don’t like it, Dirk.

A pause.

\- Stop being paranoid. I’m in the middle of the fucking desert, it’s not like someone is going to hear me, Diederik! And I’m not working for you, remember? We are partners.

A pause.

\- Yeah, ok. Listen, Dirk, shit happens. We’d have to relocate eventually anyway. Morin was… she was using again. Me and Bob, we tried to…No, I don’t know who the kid was! Bob said that he was asking for a runaway dog… Nuh, didn’t look like a cop to me. I said, he had no badge! Around 20-25 years old, short hair, military style, approximately 6.10. Well obviously he had been trained… That’s not what I’m saying! How the fuck do I know? He did look like someone who lives on a road. A climber, maybe, or - or a surfer. To rob us of our money, what else? Kids these days...

A pause.

\- That’s the country we’re all living now, Dirk, I tell you that. Beggars everywhere, only looking to steal what’s not theirs… fucking white trash, man. I feel sick when I think about Daisy having married one of those bums.

A pause.

\- I have some serious clients, Dirk, I can’t just bail out on them... That’s right. Yeah, you do that. Call me when you get there.

The driver takes last drag on the cigarette and turns to the door. 

That’s when his head gets hit by a rock.


	11. Chapter 11

It's not an easy thing running a supernatural drug business. One has to position his product smartly so that it gets an explicit and distinct place in the minds of all potential customers. The drug must have a clear identity that highlights the benefits to the consumer all the while staying under radar so that no unwanted attention was attracted from police or, say, the Sinaloa cartel. It's LA we are talking here, the market that is way too crowded and competitive for a new brand without clear differentiation from others in the minds of consumers to win said consumers. Why would Charlie, Lindsay or Tila change their preferred brand to a new one? If not them, then who exactly are people who're going to buy something so new and strange? It's not an easy task to boost sales of what is basically a jinn's venom on a market like this one. Especially for high school dropout like Dirk, who had never gotten a chance to obtain a graduate marketing degree.

But Dirk Deveraux is smart and he knows people in certain circles. Not all of the hunters are fine upstanding citizens like his father, late Bob Deveraux (may he rest in peace) used to be. Some of the hunters are using themselves in between the jobs just to take the edge off. Some of them have gotten really tired of being tough, brave, bound by honour and barely scraping by. 

Bring me the poor, bring me the tired ones, for they are ready to switch parties, the Devil says. 

Just to be clear - Dirk doesn't believe in God or the Devil, for that matter. Looking around - and he had been places and had seen things - he'd gotten quite sure that God had left the building with Devil in tow. Humanity is on their own. Just men, women and some supernatural creatures, that's it. He'd be fool not to use his knowledge of the supernatural to his advantage. And Dirk is no fool.

He goes slow in the beginning, dropping hints here and there, giving away free samples. It's good that his product is not seasonally based and deals with one of the fundamental human needs - being happy. 

He even thinks about naming his brand "happy" but decides against it. It sounds too simple and he wants more mystery for the name of his brand. Than one of the dealers offers a regular customer "new nice stuff", and the name sticks. 

Nice. Whatever.

Dirk keeps the jinn - his supernatural gold-mine - in a rented self-storage unit in a wet old basement in the slowly falling in ruin Las Vegas downtown. In a year, he manages to make enough money to rent himself a house in Altadena. His product is popular with customers - especially, as he had found out after first three months, with old and unhappy ones. He never deals with a final customer himself - he has Bob, Morin and Gus for it, a group of old hunting partners (he suspects that Morin sleeps with both of them) who went to the dark side easily as soon as Dirk'd shown them a wad of franklins and had sweeten the transit with a passionate promise of some kind of social justice. Whatever.

Hunters are simple people. Dirk knows how to pick the easily corrupted ones. And he needs the training they'd got so that they'd help him to feed the jinn.

"We'd gonna feed off the rich bastards who already are doing drugs, society owns hunters much more than we're getting… My own Father had died on a hunt...we will clear the earth off the scum, so to say..."

He never tells them where he keeps the jinn, of course. He only tells them to bring him people - preferably young healthy males, drifters with no immediate family whom nobody's gonna miss much enough to report to the police about them gone missing for a month or two. Young males are better than women, of course - they are stronger and last longer. Besides, families tend to check on their daughters now and then while their wayward sons could go completely AWOL and nobody's gonna bat an eye. 

The better are the sales, the more jinn' venom he needs and the more people he has to feed to the jinn. Bob, Gus and Morin are ok with the plan. They all are old and bitter about life, morals ruined by the hunts and the poverty. They just don't have it in them to care anymore. Dirk rents them a run-down house outside of Vegas and refers all interested clients to them.

On average, It's one corpse per month that Dirk has to get rid of. On the bright side ("There's always a bright side, kid, a silver lining in every cloud", his tremendously boring Dad used to tell him), after jinn is done with the victims there's not much left of the bodies and the bones look decades old. Dirk drops them off at Gus' or take them to the desert himself and never gives it a second thought. Life is unfair, bitches. Eat or be eaten. The only problem he is desperate to solve is how to make his business legit (kidnappings and killings aside).

And one day when he is at the Whole Foods, looking at some 7-dollar-a-pint Kefir he suddenly realises that that could be in fact rather easy. All he needs is a Tibetan guru and a startup.


	12. Chapter 12

When Gus opens his eyes he finds himself at the end of a gun barrel. 

It’s dark, he’s sitting in the front seat of his own truck, and the guy holding the weapon is the same bastard that Gus had spent half of the day trying to track down. The kid that had killed Morin and scared the shit out of Bob earlier in the morning. He looks like he's in his early 20-s but could be a teenager for all Gus knows. It’s getting difficult for Gus to tell the age of a youngster nowadays, people on the streets seem to grow younger with each passing year. The kid is ridiculously pretty - a male model type - but his eyes are cold and his grip on the gun is strong and stable. Early 20-s then. He looks Gus straight in the eyes, one brow lifting in a show of bravado, being very pleased with himself. Meanwhile Gus’ hands are handcuffed behind his back, his wrists are in pain, his fingers are numb and he really, really needs to piss.

\- Who did you talk to on the phone? - the guy asks. - And what’ve you done to the owners of the bags in the back? Start talking. I’ll spare your life if your explanation is satisfying.  
\- I doubt that, Gus answers in a husky voice.  
He’s feeling gloomy.  
\- Doubt what?  
\- That my explanation could possibly satisfy anybody.  
\- Well, don’t try to be smart, talk.  
\- Who are you?  
\- I'm a guy with the gun.  
\- Well then. Do you know about the supernatural?

The kid actually takes a minute to think about it, and than his eyes sparkle.

\- S’pose I do. Do you?  
\- Do you truly understand what I’m talking about, kid?  
\- I’m not a kid, - the kid says, and his gaze is still steady. - Listen, we can do it in either of two ways. Since you have the GPS in here I can put a bullet in your head, drive back to wherever you’ve been lately and figure everything out myself. Or you can start talking and I promise I’ll leave you be. The choice is yours.

Definitely a professional, perhaps military trained. Could this kid be a hunter? Gus had underestimated him earlier when the guy was unconscious - he looked so young with his pretty face and sandy hair. Gus should’ve shot him when he had a chance. 

Fuck you, Dirk, Gus thinks. Fuck you and your odd business strategy. Kidnapping people to feed them to a jinn - doesn’t it even sound crazy? Profit was good though. More than good. 

Dirk must be making more than a million per year.

And they did it for three years straight without a problem - they being Bob, Morin and Morin's little sister Alice. Everything was going so smoothly. Nobody ever came looking for the poor bastards that they had taken from the street corners, bus stations and highways and shipped to LA. Morin and Bob both were great at picking up just the right ones, the boys that nobody cared about. Nice and easy. They did a mistake just once when Bob picked a troubled teenager who had sworn that his family had kicked him out for being queer from a street in downtown Vegas. Turned out the boy was the youngest child - loved and spoiled - of a fairly rich family from Oregon. Looking for adventures on the streets of Vegas, of all cities. A cliche teenage rebellion. Long after the boy's bones had been buried in the desert Gus caught sight of his smiling face beaming out from a missing persons poster on a truck stop along the I-15.

Gus has to take a leak. He’s probably gonna be shot in a matter of few minutes with his bladder still full. Just his luck. It’s strange how unreal it feels to know that the end of his life is mere minutes away. He has never envisaged spending his whole life doing odd jobs and then becoming a supernatural hunter-turned-criminal. He’d thought he’d do something good with his life eventually. He had it all planned out lately - one more year and he’d quit working for Dirk (the scary bastard is crazy as an outhouse rat). He’d move to Florida, buy a boat, spend his last days on the water. He'd worry less and drink more. Maybe he’d even find himself a jolly little widow to spend evenings with.

Men make plans, God laughs.

\- So you know about the things that go bump in the night? That they are real?  
\- I already told ya, - the guy says. - Let’s assume I’m a hunter. And I recall seeing an interesting tattoo on one of your guys.

Oh. That explains the training then. Does the hunting community know what's going on? Is their a bounty on their heads?

\- Listen kid. If you are a hunter yourself you must know that the job sucks. I mean it might feel fascinating at your age when you are good-looking and ladies are all grateful, y’know? But take it from someone who had been in the business for decades - it sucks, simple as that. I spent nine years behind the bars because of the job and I hadn’t done shit, y’know? Me and my partner, we had killed a nasty witch in that shithole of a town once and what did we get in return from the local folks as a thank you? My best friend got a bullet in his head and I was sent to Bertie for nine fucking years. Have you ever been to prison, son? 

\- I’m not your son and you ain’t gonna get me crying over you. Let’s cut to the chase. The guy that you’ve been talking to on the phone, Dirk, right? What’s he's up to? 

Least Gus can do is to take fucking Dirk down with him. Or maybe not. Maybe he can still survive the encounter if he acts clever. He’d promise to take the guy to the Bob’s and then when they are within the city limits he’d try to open the door and fall from the cabin on the road…

\- Know what, I’m tired. It’s been a long day. I’ll count to three and then shoot you if you don’t say something valuable. One, two...  
\- Dirk is in supernatural drug business, - Gus says quickly. - Listen, I don’t wanna die in this fucking desert. I can show where your car is. Bob moved it into one of his garages after he’d found the keys and took a ride around the block. It was easy to spot it.  
\- How do I find this Dirk?

Gus doesn’t know much about Dirk, not actually. He’s not even sure Dirk is the guy’s real name. All that he knows is that the guy is an ex-hunter. Same as he himself used to be back in the day when he was young and enthusiastic. Dirk is in his early thirties now and he knows the lore and the habits of the dark creatures by heart as if he’s got a decades long experience in the field on him. A son of a hunter, probably. Thing is, Dirk doesn’t like talking about his past. He's young. He still has a future ahead of him.

\- I don’t know all the details, - he says. - What I know, son, is that Dirk is an asshole. Can kill a sweet family and a kitten in cold blood. This whole business was his idea. He lives in LA - mind you, he’d never invited me to his place. Did we take… ehhh… Are you missing... are you looking for someone specifically? Or are you on a hunt?

\- What kind of a drug exactly?

His captor puts the gun away, fires the engine and takes the right turn on the road before Gus says “take the right turn”. So the kid didn’t lie about using GPS to track back his movements. Gus himself is still in the process of figuring out how the damn thing works.

\- It’s a jinn’s venom, - he answers. 

He's getting too old for this shit.

The truck stops.

\- Are you telling me that Dirk is trading a jinn’s venom? That means… he has a jinn being kept captive somewhere. Right? Is he out of his mind? Do you know where the jinn is? Have you been there?

\- Hell no. We just. We provide Dirk with, y'know, everything he needs and deal with the venom. Bob's got friends, so… I really don’t know much.

\- And you do what exactly? What is it that you are “providing” him with?

And then the kid’s eyes bug out.

\- The jinn, - he says. - You are providing for the jinn. You are kidnapping people and feed them to the fucking jinn! 

Gus watches as if in a slow-motion how the kid’s hand moves away from the wheel, his face like a thunder. In a second there is a gun shoved in Gus’ face again.

and then 

then

Then he’s lying on his back on the side of the road under the full moon with a bullet in his shoulder, his hands still cuffed and his pants wet.


End file.
